Slack week

Distance 39km [total: minimalist 269.6km: Barefoot 2425.5km] Week 12

Monday, 19-Mar. 6km

A warm day of 31C and it's a run around with the lake with a friend of mine except that I'm late out of work, held up in a meeting and by the time I get there they have already set off. In a way that is better in that I can run at a faster pace to see if I can catch up rather than run at a more sedate pace. Running along the western edge of the lake the wind has picked up and is hot as it blows towards me. I was feeling quite dry by the time I got to the turn point that takes me across Delfin Island. I was halfway around and no sign of my running partner yet, they had set off 15 minutes before me. Back onto the eastern side of the lake and I'm running on darker bricks and they have been baking in the sun all afternoon and they are quite warm, well, very warm. I had to increase my cadence to keep my feet in the air for as long as possible to let them cool off. Eventually 3/4 of the way around I spied my training partner up ahead, suffering in the heat. I caught up and relaxed and jogged the remaining distance. This was an un-timed run, just a bit of a fun.

Saturday, 24-Mar. 18.5km

Quite a bit of a running gap during the week due to commitments in the evenings. A overnight change in the weather on Tuesday brought the temperature down from 33C back to 20C. All this up and down of temperatures has left me with a head cold, stuffed up nose. The weather was pretty miserable for the rest of the week, cool and wet. I drove into work on Friday as it was raining hard during the morning and I would have got wet walking to the bus and then to work. So, my next run was today. After getting an early morning haircut while the rain was coming down outside I headed to the beach. The sky was filled with black rain clouds and it looked almost guaranteed that I would get wet, but, no, I escaped. It rained ahead of me and behind me but where I was running it stayed dry. I set up a good pace, helped by a tailwind. The beach was relatively quiet, a few dog people around but not the usual numbers, I only had one dog chase incident. My feet were a little numb as the beach was cold, a taste of the winter to come. On the return run the sun was out and this warmed the sand and felt good underfoot. I'm not feeling as tired over the 18.5km, only the last km am I wishing it was over. I'll have to see if I can boost the distance to 21km in the next month, the magic 1/2 marathon distance, I've not run that distance for well over 20 years.

Sunday, 25-Mar. 7.5km + 7km

I did my 2 runs in a day, one morning and one in the late afternoon. The morning run was around the lake where I got caught up in a triathlon part way around. That was good as it gave me a boost in speed around the last quarter of the lake as I ran with the participants in the run leg of the event. I ran the course in around 42 minutes which was pretty good. The feet were a bit sore after though. At around 5pm I drove to the beach to see if I could get a fast run in but unfortunately the tide was high with very soft sand. Not ideal conditions to run fast under. I did an average pace run, tried to make it more fun by running in and out of the waves. The time was unimportant. I need to see if I can squeeze in as many kilometres as I can next week in a buildup to the 10km run on Easter Friday.


Neil